"The Playful World"

From the introduction to Mark Pesce's The Playful World, where we are awakened to the 21st century world of children's toys

"Although the Furby seems to have come from nowhere to capture the hearts of children worldwide, in reality, it incorporates everything we already know about how the future will behave. The world reacts to us - interacts with us - at a growing level of intelligence and flexibility. A century ago people marveled at the power and control of the electric light, which turned the night into day and ushered in a twenty-four hour world. Today we and our children are amazed by a synthetic creature possessing a dim image of our own consciousness and announcing the advent of a playful world, where the gulf between wish and reality collapses to produce a new kind of creativity.

"Toys can serve as points of departure for another voyage of exploration, a search for the world of our children's expectations. As much as a spear or wheel or astronaut figurine ever shaped a child's view of the world, these toys - because they now react to us - tell us that our children will have a different view of the 'interior' nature of the world, seeing it as potentially vital, intelligent, and infinitely transformable. The 'dead' world of objects before intelligence and interactivity will not exist for them, and, as they grow to adulthood, they will likely demand that the world remain as pliable as they remember from their youngest days. Fortunately, we are ready for that challenge. Just as the creative world of children has become manipulable, programmable and mutable, the entire fabric of the material world seems poised on the edge of a similar transformation. That, at essence, is the theme of this book, because where our children are already going, we look to follow."

I don't know really what this says for the children of the less affluent, or the more informed, or of non-participating cultures. I believe they will make their own toys - out of broken Furbys and bits of cell phones and last year's handheld computer games. I don't know if they will find a more responsive or more forboding world. But I do agree with one thing. As Mr. Pesce says so clearly: "where our children are already going, we look to follow."